Macinstruct Nerdification Station

Making the Most of Time Machine

mcone — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 23:01:52 -0700

Wayne Linder
Friday, December 7, 2007

In an earlier article, I gave an overview of Apple’s Time Machine backup solution. Today we’re going to go a bit deeper. This won’t be a tutorial on how to use Time Machine, because the interface is pretty simple. Instead, we’ll show you some of the more advanced options. We’ll also see why the format of your drive makes a difference and even take a trip through the steps needed for network backup.

Who the Heck Even Needs Time Machine?

First, let’s discuss the need for backup. You need it.

Pretty simple, eh? Remember, all of your music, photo and documents are digital files these days. Digital photos have no negatives, so if the original file is lost, you can’t get “reprints.” Backup is imperative if you really care about your data. With Time Machine, Apple has released an application that makes backup, a process usually seen as difficult, incredibly easy.

Before we get into the meat of the article, let’s backtrack a bit. In the first build of Leopard, Time Machine had a serious issue; if you connected a PC drive to your Mac, you would be asked if you wanted to use the drive with Time Machine. If you chose Yes, the drive would be reformatted. Everything looked good until you hit the 10GB mark on the drive, then the backup would fail. The reason is that Apple formatted your drive as Mac OS Extended, but the underlying structure of the drive still had the PC’s MBR (Master Boot Record) partition scheme. Another issue involved not being able to see past backups. This issue was traced to non-alphanumeric characters in your computer’s name. With the release of 10.5.1, these issues have been fixed and people are again backing up happily.

Now that you’ve gotten this far in the article, you may be wondering why an article is even needed on backup software that is described as being “incredibly easy.” Those of you who already know how it works can go ahead and skip on to the second part of the article. I have seen enough postings in the forums questioning how Time Machine works under the hood that I felt it was necessary to give a more in-depth tutorial. So, with that said, let’s go!

Making Better Backups With Time Machine

Obviously, the place to start would be the Time Machine control panel. Here you will see the dizzying amount of options Apple has included – an On/Off switch, a place to choose your backup destination, and a place to exclude volumes, folders and even files.

Pretty difficult stuff, right? We’ll start by choosing a Destination disk. While you can use a partition of your main hard drive as a destination, this is not exactly a good idea. When your drive dies (notice, I said when), your backup data is dead as well. Apple recommends using an external hard drive as your destination, which is why a dialog appears asking you if you want to use a newly connected drive as your Time Machine backup disk.

As I said earlier, if your drive is formatted as a Mac/PC drive (FAT32), like most drives from vendors these days are, you will be asked if you would like that drive formatted to work with Time Machine. Once it is formatted, Time Machine will launch and you can select your options. In the initial build of Leopard, Time Machine had an issue with some drives formatted as FAT32. The OS would format the drive as Mac OS Extended (Journaled), but the underlying structure of the drive was still using the PC’s Master Boot Record partition scheme, resulting in some stalled backups. Current versions of Leopard (10.5.1 and later) now partition the drive correctly.

By default, Time Machine backs up everything – your documents, your System, even invisible files. If you would like to back up only your User folder, for instance, you would click the Options button and then click the plus (+) button below the list box. Find your System folder and add it to the exclusion list. A dialog (below) will ask if you want to exclude your System Folder only or Exclude All System Files.

If you choose to exclude your System folder, then that is all that will be excluded. If you choose to exclude All System Files, then not only will your System folder not be backed up, but your Apple applications such as iChat, Safari and more will be excluded from the backup as well. For many, this isn’t a hardship since installing a clean OS also gives you those applications back.

If you want to exclude more than just those folders, then the fun really begins. Remember, Apple is trying to make this the easiest backup solution for the majority. Going a bit more in-depth can be done, but it is a bit of work. To make your custom exclude list, click the Show invisible items checkbox and you will see a list of stuff that Apple usually keeps hidden. Looking at the screen shot below, you can see that I’ve excluded everything except my Users folder.

This will result in a backup of all the data for each user account – their music, photos, documents, preference files and more – but none of the stuff that can be easily recovered by an OS install.

Making Network Backups

In earlier betas of Leopard, it was reported that you could use your AirPort Disk – a hard drive connected to your AirPort Extreme – as a Time Machine backup destination. This feature disappeared in the final build of Leopard. The reason? It was abysmally slow.

Why is using network storage slow? Here’s why. Most network hard drives and NAS appliances these days use a variant of Linux as their operating system. As a result, the hard drives need to be formatted as FAT32. Although Macs can read and write FAT32-formatted drives, Time Machine uses hard links – a way of linking a file in one location to the actual file in another – to save space. For an incredibly thorough explanation of hard links, read John Siracusa’s excellent article here.

So how does a Mac back up to a network device that isn’t in the proper format? By making a disk image. Time Machine creates a growable disk image on the network drive and mounts that image, which is in the proper HFS+ format, on the local computer. When Time Machine backs up, the data goes into the mounted image, which updates the disk image file on the network drive.

These bits slinging back and forth through Ethernet are not going very fast compared to a drive connected via FireWire or USB. On my 100Base-T network (I have the older non-Gigabit AirPort Extreme), my backup goes through at about 1MB per second. That means my initial backup would take approximately 39 hours. Not exactly what one would term “speedy.”

Since Apple disabled this feature, how can you get it to work? There are a variety of ways. The easiest way is to tell Time Machine that it should list unsupported drives in its Destination window. This is done by changing a System Preference file by typing this in the Terminal and hitting the Enter key:

defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

Notice the word Unsupported in there? Gee, wonder if Apple knows something we don’t? Could it be stated that way for a reason? That said, do backups seem to work? Yes they do. However, my trust level isn’t as high as it would be if Apple had released Time Machine with this feature enabled.

We hope you enjoyed this look under the hood of Time Machine. As you can see, it’s really not that complex. Is it a backup solution for everyone? No. It is, however, an incredibly easy and intuitive backup solution that people will hopefully use. If you’ve ever thought, “I know I should back up my computer” but weren’t sure how, Apple has made it easy enough – and powerful enough – for the average user.

Meet Your Macinstructor

A computer user since the early days, and a Mac user since the first Mac 128K, Wayne Linder currently works for a large storage and peripheral company after having several careers in the audio, advertising and IT fields. He helps run Utah's largest Macintosh User Group - UMUG - and is active on many computer help forums. He is also a member of the Air Force Reserves and enjoys working on his computer until the wee hours of the morning, even though his wife claims he should put down the bloody mouse and exercise a little. (In his defense, he just doesn't understand the concept of voluntary sweating. What's up with that?!) Email him at wayne@macinstruct.com

Say hello to Mac OS X Leopard

mcone — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 21:41:36 -0600

Wayne Linder
Friday, October 26, 2007

Today, Apple will once again show that they’re good to the core as they let the latest cat, Leopard, out of the bag. Mac OS X 10.5 will show the world that even though they removed the word Computer from their name, Apple hasn’t fallen far from that tree.

There, now that we’ve gotten the obligatory clichés out of the way, we can continue with the article. At 6:00 pm today, Apple will have their newest operating system for sale. Leopard, the latest in OS code names based on big cats, promises to make your computer easier to use with some innovative new technologies. We’ll look at some of the major ones today.

From Sherlock in earlier versions of OS X to Spotlight and Automator in 10.4, with every successive release of OS X, Apple has added various features and applications to increase productivity and make the upgrade compelling for users of earlier operating systems. Mac OS X 10.5 is no different, and actually has a few ‘gotta have’ features – the new Finder and Time Machine.

As you can see from the screenshot below, Apple has given the Desktop quite a facelift.

From the top, you can see that the menu bar is now translucent, which allows your Desktop backgrounds to blend into the menu bar and make a more seamless transition. The Dock has a new look as well, with the icons looking more 3-dimensional and appearing to float above the Dock itself. Now added to the Dock are Stacks, which are great ways of organizing files. Simply drop a folder onto the Dock to the right of the crosswalk (the dotted line on the right) and all of the documents in it are displayed in either a tower of files or a grid, depending on how many files you have. Here are examples of both Fan and Grid views:

Another nice thing about Stacks, and icons in general in the Finder, is that rather than a generic-looking document icon, you actually get an icon that looks like the first page of your document. All Apple iLife and iWork applications are supported in the initial release of Leopard as well as Microsoft Office applications, with support for other applications coming as developers refresh their applications for Leopard. By default, Apple includes a Stack for your downloads, so instead of cluttering up your Desktop with a bunch of downloaded files, you have it all in a nice neat stack.

Speaking of cluttering up your Desktop, if you’re like my wife and can’t even see your Desktop, you’ll appreciate the finer control you have over your Desktop in Leopard. In the past, you could only get more icons on your Desktop by shrinking both the icon and font size. In the new View Options dialog, as seen below, you can now pack ‘em in tighter then ever before.

If you’ve used iTunes 7 or one of the new video iPods, you’ve gotten to know Cover Flow – Apple’s way of displaying album art in an innovative horizontal-scrolling format. In the new Finder, Cover Flow displays so much more. You can, of course, browse your Finder windows via list, icon and column views. Leopard adds Cover Flow. At first, it seems kind of strange to view your files in this manner. Once you start using it, however, it really grows on you. For instance, flipping through my Documents folder in Icon view in 10.4 shows me many generic Word, Excel, Keynote and text icons. Kind of hard to know which is which unless they’re named descriptively enough. Looking through the same folder using Cover Flow in Leopard allows me to look inside the document so I can see what it looks like. The document name almost becomes secondary. You not only see what the document’s first page or first frame (if it’s a movie) looks like, you can preview the whole thing as well. If it’s a movie, clicking on the icon plays the movie file. If it’s a multiple-page document, like a Keynote presentation, clicking on it allows you to move forward and backwards through the pages, so you can make sure that it’s the right one. Trust me, once you start using it, it becomes the natural way for browsing through your files. Here’s what Cover Flow looks like when browsing through a folder of movies. Click the video and a play button appears. Click Play and your movie displays in the Cover Flow view.

Rounding out the major Finder features is Spaces – Apple’s way of extending your Desktop. With Spaces, you can have groups of applications assigned to different virtual Desktops. Virtual Desktops are a great way to have many windows open, but not cluttering up the place. For instance, here is how mine is configured:

As you can see, I have four separate Spaces (you can have up to 16). My business applications for mail and meetings (Mail and iCal) are both in Space 3. iTunes is in Space 2, iChat is in Space 4 and Word is in Space 1. You can either use Spaces’ switching method to switch between virtual Desktops (hold down the Control key and type which number you want) or you can switch to a running application (using either Command –Tab or the Dock) and your entire environment changes as well. For instance, when I switch to Space 1, the only window I have open is Word, so I can concentrate on my writing. When I switch to iTunes, all other windows close and iTunes comes up. This is great because I don’t have a lot of windows cluttering up my Desktop and I don’t have to use Exposé to find the window I’m looking for – which is perfect for small screens and laptops.

There are many more Finder features, like Quick Look, Screen Sharing and more. We’ll look at those another time. Right now, we’ll take a look at what I feel is the "killer app" in Leopard – Time Machine.

First, how about a quick show of virtual hands – who here backs up their computer? Yeah, that’s pretty much what I thought. Computer industry studies have shown that a depressingly small percentage of computer users actually back up the precious files stored on their computers these days. Excuses range from the perceived difficulty of backup software to just forgetting. Unlike those people, I am a True Backup Believer. How did I get to this lofty state? Simple. I got here the way that most of us do – by getting burned and losing my data in a crash or other computer glitch. Remember what’s at stake here – your music, your documents, your digital photos and more. One mistake or power spike can destroy all of that in an instant. How fun would it be to explain to your significant other that all of your digital photos are gone? How do you fix this? Do you climb into your trusty Delorean, fire up the flux capacitor and undo the damage in your time machine? The first two are obviously out of the question, but Apple has you covered with the Time Machine part. Time Machine is Apple’s newest application that makes backup both very robust and extremely simple. When you plug in an external hard drive (or internal for the Mac Pros), you are asked if you would like to use it as your Time Machine backup drive. Simply click Yes and your backup will begin. From then on, Time Machine will automatically back up any file that has changed. As you can see, there aren’t very many confusing options. Time Machine backs up your data hourly, daily and weekly.

Backup doesn’t really get much simpler than that. Restoring a file is also very simple. Open a window where the file used to be and launch Time Machine. You will see your folder and documents in a window that recedes into the background. You can either use the date selector on the right side of the window, or use the forward/backward arrows to go to the last/previous change. To restore, go back to the date you last had the file, click Restore and it’s back. Simple backup and simple restore, what’s not to love?

You can even use Time Machine as a way to store different versions of your document. If you need a version of the document as it was last week, launch Time Machine and go to last week. Click Restore and you will get a warning dialog:

Click the Keep Both button and you will have you latest revision and last weeks as well.

Some will ask whether an external hard drive is necessary. Couldn’t Time Machine back up to the main hard drive? Although it’s true that you could back up to a partition of your hard drive, what happens when that hard drive dies (notice I said when, not if)? Then your data and your backups would be gone. External drives are safer, bootable and cheap these days (gee, you’d never guess I worked for a storage company, would you?).

Time Machine will, I feel, make computing safer for everyone. With our music, photos, movies and more of our digital lives being stored on our computers, it is more important than ever to back up. Time machine not only makes backups painless, but with its cool interface it actually makes it fun.

As I said earlier in this article, there is much much more to Leopard – from new features in iChat to Parental Controls to improvements under the hood – Apple advertises more than 300 new features. Today, we just looked at some of the main features to help you decide whether or not to make the leap to Leopard. Keep checking back here at Macinstruct for more articles on getting the most from Apple’s newest OS.

Meet Your Macinstructor

Make a Mac Web Server with MAMP and Wordpress

mcone — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 00:27:42 -0600

Janet Fouts
Monday, October 15, 2007

MAMP stands for Mac, Apache, PHP and MySQL, and installing it on your Mac creates a development environment for testing many of our favorite tools. You can do everything from browsing simple PHP files to testing complicated MySQL database driven applications right on your hard drive.

Installing MAMP takes just a few minutes. Macinstruct's Matthew Cone created a tutorial on installing MAMP and installing Drupal, so I won’t go into installing MAMP here. If you need help install MAMP, take a look Matt’s tutorial first.

Wordpress is another application that I like to configure on my machine and test before going live. Testing new themes, widgets, etc. is a lot easier directly on the development machine than it is to constantly upload new files and run them on the public site. With this little tutorial and MAMP, you’ll be testing in 10 minutes or less.

I’m using MAMP PRO, but the free version of MAMP works just the same. I have my MAMP settings running apache as users www/mysql. This is the recommended setting for a computer that is online, as it’s a bit more secure than using your user name.

Here's how to set everything up after you have installed MAMP:

Navigate to the start page, http://localhost:8888/MAMP/?language=English or click open start page in MAMP PRO, and then click the link to launch phpMyAdmin to create a database for your wordpress install.

To keep it simple, I called the database WordPress, but you can name it whatever you like.
Download Wordpress.
Put the unzipped contents of the install in:
Applications > MAMP > htdocs directory
Locate the wp-config-sample.php file in the Wordpress folder and open with a simple text editor. I use BBEdit, but you can use TextEdit if you prefer.
You’ll need to change the variables in this file to be the same as your MySQL information. If you don’t remember what that is, open MAMP and look at the the general settings panel under MySQL.
Enter the name of the database you created, the user name, password and host (for MAMP this is probably locahost:8889).

Save your edited file as "wp-config.php".
Now run the Wordpress installer from http://localhost:8888/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php. When you install, Wordpress will randomly generate a password. Make sure you save this and change it as soon as you log in, by going to the options menu in Wordpress.
Go to http://localhost:8888/wordpress/. You should see a default installation of Wordpress, ready to start testing all those cool new themes or plug-ins!

Meet Your Macinstructor

Janet Fouts is a web developer and designer who provides tech support for a bevy of clients and friends who need a little help with their Macs. You can contact Janet at macinstiruct@tatudigital.com.

What is Interference Robustness?

mcone — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 01:05:19 -0600

Arbi Karamians
Monday, September 10, 2007

Few topics have ever been more exhaustively analyzed and discussed within Internet/Macintosh based forums than the Apple AirPort feature “Interference Robustness.” The lack of information made available by Apple regarding the feature makes for a lot of confused and curious Mac users. Unfortunately the aforementioned forums appear to be the only venue through which one can find any significant information regarding Interference Robustness. In fact, I ran a quick search on “Mac Help” on my MacBook Pro and within all the documentation provided by Apple, Interference Robustness was mentioned on a single occasion. And that reference was limited to “If you are using an AirPort Extreme wireless card and are experiencing network interference, you can use the status menu to turn on Interference Robustness.” Simple enough, but several questions remain: “What does it do and how does it work? When should I use it? If it cuts down on interference shouldn’t I leave it on all the time?”

These specific questions appear to be the most common topic of discussion online, and they're specific questions that have been left unanswered. Whether it’s by design (for one Steve Jobs reason or another) or simply that they believe it’s self-explanatory, the fact remains that Interference Robustness is the Area 51 of OS X. I know it seems a bit cheeky to compare an OS X feature to a highly secure government compound which is said to host the development and testing of military aircraft, but seriously, try for yourself - Google it. After some serious scouring, I honestly believe you’d be more successful obtaining information regarding the goings on at the Groom Lake compound.

So after I’d received no sound explanation from “Mac Help,” I went one step further and ran a similar search on the Apple website and was actually surprised to find zero results on the topic. I then moved on to the Apple Support page and ran a similar query that provided me with 17 matches. The majority of the results provided instructions on how to enable the feature through your AirPort and AirPort Extreme. What they did not provide were answers to the questions people have been asking.

So what the heck is it?

In order to move forward and tackle these questions and uncover the inner workings of Interference Robustness, we first need to cover some of the basics of Wireless Local Access Networks (WLAN.) Basic home networks utilize the 802.11 standard (Wi-Fi) developed by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE.) To the best of my knowledge, all home networking hardware utilizes this standard. Different variations of the 802.11 standard exist, beginning with 802.11a and adding modulation ratifications of 802.11b, g, and the most recent n.

Each new modulation standard resolved issues from previous versions while also increasing range and data rate. For instance, the indoor range for 802.11a is roughly 35 meters while the range for 802.11n is roughly 70 meters. I’m sure all of you can imagine how one would benefit from using a router that supported 802.11n in your home or home/office.

The amendments to the standards changed a lot of things but what they didn’t change was the operating frequency. They operate under a 2.4-2.5 Ghz band. This is troublesome simply because most home appliances operate in the same band. For instance most home cordless phones, microwave ovens and most Bluetooth devices have an op. frequency of 2,4Ghz. So one can see how each connection may face interference.

Most wireless hardware manufacturers have already taken preemptive measures to battle interference from other sources. Interference Robustness is Apple AirPort’s insurance policy against interference caused by outside variables. It’s also important to understand that if you run a Mac and use a Linksys, Netgear, Belkin or one of the many other options one has, checking the “Use Interference Robustness” option will not work. Interference Robustness is specific to Macs connected to Apple’s AirPort Express and Airport Extreme. So with all that having been said let’s answer some questions.

What does it do? How does it work?

The 802.11 protocol was designed to essentially adjust itself to protect itself from interference. More specifically it adjusts packet size. The idea is this: send smaller packets at higher speeds, and the access point will more securely receive the packets. So when faced with interference, this option will literally adjust the transmission of packets to ensure the access point receives more packets.

When should I use it?

It really depends on the situation. Some users will experience WLAN issues based on the specific products they have in their home in this case use Interference Robustness. Others will face WLAN issues because they either live or work in a highly populated area such as an apartment building or office building. This would be an ideal time to use Interference Robustness. Basically, whenever you face WLAN interference that is caused by outside variables, Interference Robustness will help.

If it cuts down on interference, shouldn’t I leave it on all the time?

No. This is very important to understand. Using Interference Robustness will essentially slow down your wireless connection. As discussed above, if you’re looking for speed, you send a high frequency of large packets. If you’re looking to battle interference you send smaller packets at a lower frequency. So your connection will be slow but strong.

I hope this helps you better understand why it’s there and why it’s necessary – for some more importantly how it works!

Meet Your Macinstructor

Arbi Karamians is an enthusiastic and motivated 20-something who spends his time between work, play, and family. He was an unwitting PC user for nearly 15 years of his computing life who later was enlightened through his quest for higher efficiency and increased productivity. He bought his first Mac nearly 2 years ago and he's never looked back. The less time he spends looking for printer drivers the more he gets done! Email him at arbi@macinstruct.com.

A Better Finder: Make it Work Harder

mcone — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 22:52:49 -0600

Justin Busch
Monday, August 20, 2007

With all of the wonderful work that Apple has done with Mac OS X to make navigating the computer simple, it’s time to make the Finder work harder for you. You’ve customized the dock, gotten accustomed to the column view, and are finding you work faster with Spotlight. Now, tweak those Finder windows to speed up your workflow even more.

Like many applications in Mac OS X, you can customize the Finder’s toolbar by control + clicking (right-clicking) the toolbar to show a contextual menu. Select Customize Toolbar to open the available tools that can be added (or removed) from the toolbar.

To make changes, simply click and drag a tool from the panel to any location in the toolbar. For example, we like to have the Get Info button in the toolbar for times that it’s inconvenient to go to the menu (or hit the keyboard shortcut). To keep things balanced, we’ve added another Flexible Space and the Get Info tool in the middle.

The Finder’s toolbar can also act as a mini application launcher. To add an application, click and drag the applications icon to the area at the far right of the Finder’s toolbar until the Plus icon appears. Release the application to add it to your toolbar.

Add some common applications that you use frequently for a quick one-click or drag-and-drop launch. Applications such as word processors, internet utilities and of course Preview work wonders in the Finder’s toolbar.

Meet Your Macinstructor

Justin Busch is an educational technician in the Distance Learning Program at the Community College of Allegheny County. He is currently a graduate student at Seton Hill University, where he is working towards his Masters Degree in Education with an emphasis on Instructional Systems Design. He has been a Mac user since 1994.

Cool Down Your MacBook Pro

mcone — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 02:02:02 -0600

Arbi Karamians
Monday, August 6, 2007

I'm a member of a small group of individuals who believed they were falling victim to the now infamous MacBook Pro overheating problem. In hindsight, I now believe my false alarm was fueled more by the barrage of media reports concerning the issue than an actual problem. But I decided I was going to take some preemptive measures to counteract the looming problems I would face if I allowed heat to ravage my system. Since it was reported that the issue was of major concern, I took a variety of measures – some a bit more extreme than others.

I understand that a majority of MacBook Pro owners have in some way resolved this issue, but I decided to write this article after a friend of mine asked me what I did when faced with similar problems. So here are some of the ways I battled the heat. I'll begin with the more conventional methods I used.

I went to my local tech store and bought a laptop-cooling pad. These types of products vary in quality and performance, so I read some reviews and purchased one I thought would work well. Heat issues aside, if you have a laptop or notebook, I suggest you purchase a similar product. The majority of these products serve several useful functions, such as being ergonomic, and most are powered through a USB connection.
I downloaded the iStat Pro widget. iStat Pro is a nice little widget that monitors your Intel Mac. It monitors memory usage, your hard drives, network and the temperature of your Intel Mac. Though this does not in any way help to cool down your Mac, it will allow you to monitor its temperature to ensure that your MacBook Pro doesn’t overheat.
This is where things get a little tricky. The following instructions will make your Macs fans run faster and longer. It is VERY IMPORTANT to backup the files we are going to edit.
Access your extension folder (System > Library > Extensions) and find AppleBlower.kext and AppleFan.kext. Make two separate copies of these files one set for editing the other as back up, since they have the same name save them in two separate locations.

Once you’ve accessed these files, made your copies and saved them in safe locations, it's time to edit. Locate the copies of these files and find AppleBlower.kext. Right click on the file and choose Show Package Contents. Within this file you’ll find 2 or 3 files - the one we’re looking for is info.plist, located in the contents folder. Open that file and scroll down till you see DualProcessorBlower. Edit that portion of the file so that it looks exactly like the image below. Be very careful! I can’t stress this enough – only change what you see in the image below. Leave the rest of the file alone.

Once you’ve completed this, save the file and follow the same steps to access the info.plist file within the AppleFan.Kext folder. Scroll down to the bottom of the file until you see a set of numbers, like in the image below. This is where you can run into trouble if you’re not careful. I would suggest finding the highest number in that set and changing the others to the same number and no higher. This number will vary from one Intel Mac to the other so please only go as high as your highest number. Simply copy the new info.plist files into their appropriate folders and restart your computer. To avoid the confusion of which info.plist file goes where simply replace the files as soon as you’ve completed editing them. Remember, keep your backup copies!

If you followed these steps correctly you’ll immediately notice a cooler MacBook Pro. See for yourself – download iStat Pro and compare the difference in temperature before and after. If you feel that the difference is negligible then simply open your backup copies and return the files to their defaults. Enjoy your "new" - and much cooler - MacBook Pro!

Meet Your Macinstructor

Mailplane: Better Gmail for Your Mac

mcone — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 01:51:23 -0600

Matthew Cone
Monday, July 30, 2007

When we discussed Google applications a couple weeks ago, we mentioned several applications that allowed you to check your Gmail account from your Mac's Desktop. But these are only good insofar as you can see that you have new email messages waiting to be read. To actually read the email messages, you still have to open up a web browser and long into Gmail.

We've also discussed how to use Gmail with Apple's Mail, which works great if you only use your Gmail account on your Mac. But if you work away from home a lot, or if you redirect your other POP3 accounts to your Gmail account, you're going to want to use something else.

If you're dissatisfied with all of those options, you'll want to take Mailplane for a spin. This shareware Mac application (currently free while in Beta testing) brings Gmail to your Mac with a user-friendly interface. You'll need to request an invitation to get Mailplane - it only took us a couple days to get the download link. We'll show you around this great application!

What's It Good For?

We can already hear the skeptics: "Isn't this thing just a glorified web browser?" Well, yes and no. It's true that Mailplane simply loads the Gmail webpage. But there's so much more! First, it's really nice to have Gmail in a dedicated application all by itself - especially one that can automatically log into Gmail.

Check out these other features:

Drag and drop files into Mailplane to attach them to email messages.
Use the included iPhoto plug-in to quickly attach photos to your messages.
Set Mailplane (and Gmail, of course) as your Mac's default email client.
Built-in Growl support lets you know when new mail arrives, and the menu-bar icon lets you quickly scan the subject lines of your new messages.
Google Talk is built into Mailplane and can be configured to open when you start the application. (Thank goodness for this one!)
You can control Gmail with Mac keystrokes.
Uses secure connection (https) to keep your messages and account information private.

Mailplane might not be to everyone's tastes, but it is to ours. We dig the clean interface and the balance between Gmail and this new Mac application.

Installing and Using Mailplane

Mailplane is a very Mac-like application. Everything from the installation to the set up feels very natural, and it's all over in a matter of minutes. Here's how to do it:

Since Mailplane is in Beta testing, you'll need an invitation to try the software. Go ahead and request one here. After you receive your invitation, you can download and install the application.
When you first start the application, Mailplane will ask you if you want to it as the default mail application, install the iPhoto plugin, and automatically check for updates.
Next, you'll be asked to enter your Gmail account information. Make sure to select the secure connection checkbox!
And finally, Mailplane will ask you to turn your Keyboard Shortcuts on, if you haven't already. Just follow the directions and you'll be good to go!

That's it! You've now taken Gmail to the next level thanks to Mailplane.

Meet Your Macinstructor

Matthew Cone is a technical writer living and working in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In his free time, he does the desert rat thing and hikes and road bikes around the Southwest. The rest of the time, he studies straw-bale houses, reads Anarchist philosophy, and pretends to not be working. You can email him at: matt@macinstruct.com

Using Quicksilver's Clipboard

mcone — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 01:27:41 -0600

Eliot Lash
Monday, July 23, 2007

One of Quicksilver’s many handy features is the Clipboard module. When activated, it can keep track of the items that you have cut and copied, and let you see what is currently on the clipboard- what will appear when you paste. It can store rich formatted text and images just like the regular clipboard.

First, check to see if the Clipboard module is installed. Open Quicksilver’s Plug-ins menu from the Preferences menu, the dock menu, or by typing the keyboard shortcut ⌘-Shift-’ when Quicksilver is open. Use the search box at the bottom to look for “clipboard.” If the module is installed and activated, there will be a check in the first column of the list. If not, click the check box next to “Clipboard Module” to install it. Quicksilver will notify you once it has downloaded and installed the module.

The Clipboard module can be configured from the Preferences window. It will show up in the left-hand list of preferences. Select it, and then check the “Capture History” box. You can also tell it how many items it should remember - we like to leave it at 9.

Try bringing up the Clipboard history window by using the plug-ins menu, or by pressing ⌘-L while Quicksilver is active.

You should see a window that looks like this:

For the clipboard history window to be truly useful, it must be easy to access. You can make a global trigger for the Show Clipboard item, or you can place the window so it touches the edge of your screen. It will slide out of view, waiting for you to point near it again to slide out.

The history will probably be empty at this point, so try copying a few things into the clipboard from this page.

The text clippings will show up in the history window! At the top, number 0 is the current clipping, or what will be pasted if you type ⌘-V. If you want to paste an older item, just double-click it in the history window and it will be pasted in at the position of your text cursor.

You can copy text, images, files, etc. Rich (formatted) text will be copied, but will appear to be plain text in the clipboard history window. Experiment with TextEdit if you want to see for yourself.

First Look: Safari 3 Public Beta

mcone — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 01:17:39 -0600

Justin Busch
Monday, July 16, 2007

Important Note: Safari 3 is "beta," pre-release, time-limited software meant for evaluation and development purposes only. This software should not be used in a commercial operating environment or with important data. Before installing this software, you should back up your data.

Apple recently announced a new version of its Safari web browser for Windows PCs. They also created a new version for Macs, too. You can try out the Safari 3 Beta by going to http://www.apple.com/safari. Download and mount the .DMG. Double-click the installer. After installation is complete, restart your Mac. (There is an uninstaller included in the .DMG that will allow you to revert back to the previous release of Safari if you run into problems.)

Enhanced Search

Think of this feature as Spotlight for Safari. Press “Command + F” to bring up the search bar above the web page. Notice how the web page has dimmed. As you begin typing, Safari will highlight matches in white rectangles.

As the search text becomes more defined, Safari will highlight all matches in the bold, orange rectangle.

Movable Tabs

Tabs in Safari revolutionized the way we browsed the Internet by allowing us to have several web pages open in a single window - greatly reducing the amount of clutter on the screen. Tabs can now be rearranged. To rearrange or reorder open tabs, click and drag a tab from one position to another.

In addition to rearranging tabs, it is now possible to click and drag a tab outside of Safari to move that web page into a new window.

Resizable Text Boxes

Text boxes are found on many web pages around the Internet, on everything from blogs and forums to corporate and educational websites. It used to be that the user had to deal with the size and the shape of the text box provided by the designer or company and this could cause problems, especially when there is a need to type more than a fine lines.

Safari now lets users resize text boxes to a size that meets their needs. To do so, simply click and drag the bottom right corner to the size and dimension that best fits your needs.

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BBEdit’s Code Folding Cleans Your Work Space

mcone — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 00:27:48 -0600

Justin Busch
Monday, July 9, 2007

If you haven't noticed, we're big fans of Bare Bones’ BBEdit around here. We use it for just about everything, and if you ask us, it's about as close to text-editing perfection as you can get! New in BBEdit 8.6 is Code Folding. Code Folding literally collapses all of the text and/or data between two predefined entities in a specific computer language to reduce complexity of the content in the editor window.

Notice the downward facing arrows in the gutter (the section directly to the left of the text area).

Clicking one of the down, or folding, arrows collapses all of the text between the specified delimiters, in this case it is the HTML tags for a paragraph (< p >). Folded Code is denoted with the right pointing folding arrow and the “...” highligted in black.

Sometimes, Code Folding is not available for certain strings of text due to either differences in formatting or unrecognized code delimiters. To manually Fold Code, highlight the text by clicking and dragging with the cursor. Next, right-click on the selected text to bring up the following contextual menu.

Select Fold Selection from the contextual menu to fold the selected text. Similar to the automatically recognized folding areas in the document, manually folded text is denoted with the “...” highlighted in black. Do note that manually folded text does not have the right pointing folded arrow in the gutter.

Text can be folded as much or as little as needed. To Unfold text, click the right-pointing folded arrow in the gutter or double-click the “...” collapsed text icon in the document.

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